Expert Roundtable: Water Dialogues for Results – Bonn 2021

On 17 May the Global Water Operators’ Partnerships Alliance (GWOPA/UN-Habitat) and Cap-Net UNDP co-hosted the Expert Roundtable on “Turning the tide on Capacity Development – How to move from individual interventions to systemic capacity strengthening?” as part of the Water Dialogues for Results, Bonn 2021.

Under the slogan “Accelerating cross-sectoral SDG 6 implementation”, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), on behalf of the German Federal Government, and together with other UN Member States, participants from Major Groups and international organisations, are developing political messages to feed into the global discussion on SDG 6. 

The roundtable aimed at reinforcing the contribution of Capacity Development to accelerating cross-sectoral SDG 6 implementation. The key outcomes of the dialogue resulted in common lessons learned where the experts shared rich, interactive, and geographically diverse experiences.

The conversation dived in to three questions with the objective of jointly develop policy messages that formulate political priorities for cross-sectoral SDG6 implementation:

  1. How can the cross-sectoral ambitions of the Agenda 2030 and the importance of water and sanitation for other global agendas be strengthened? 
  2. What are concrete examples of how the recommendations can be implemented in a cross-sectoral manner to speed up action and generate the highest impact? 
  3. How can the expert community jointly reinforce and support the accelerated implementation of Capacity Development? 

The political messages will be officially submitted into the further preparation process towards the Mid-Term Review (MTR) of the International Water Action Decade in 2023.

“Besides the numerous interventions by the various capacity development actors globally what is still lacking is a robust monitoring and learning framework which will indicate and inform progress such that capacity development is in tandem with implementation efforts” emphasised Themba Gumbo, UNDP Cap-Net Director, at the welcome message for the expert roundtable.